£109bn Scottish Widows mandate set to go to Schroders

The takeover comes after Aberdeen Asset Management bought an eight-year contract to manage assets for Scottish Widows in 2014 for £550 million.

However, after Aberdeen merged with Standard Life to create Standard Life last year, Widows’ parent Lloyds pushed Standard Life Aberdeen off the funds as it then viewed the arrangement as a conflict of interest for SLA because Aberdeen had, in effect, become its competitor.

Apparent contenders for the Scottish Widows Investment Partnership mandate after it came up for bids included BlackRock, J.P Morgan Asset Management and Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

But, according to the reports, Schroders has offered Lloyds the chance to take some form of stake in its discretionary wealth arm Cazenove Capital as a sweetener to the deal.

It had been expected that Lloyds would announce who would replace Standard Life Aberdeen on the fund in August, but the process was slowed down due to arbitration between Lloyds and Standard Life Aberdeen, in which the Standard Life Aberdeen is demanding £250 million break fee.